“Who are you?”—those were the hardest three words to hear in my life.

I stood there, frozen in the cereal aisle, clutching a box of Frosted Flakes like a life preserver. Across from me, Carol from accounting stared with that polite yet vaguely confused look people get when they’re trying to place someone they should definitely know.

“It’s me,” I said, my voice cracking slightly. “Mike… from the office?”

Her eyebrows furrowed just a little. “Oh… Mike!” she said, dragging out the name like she was testing it out for the first time. “Right. Of course.” But I could see it in her eyes—she had no idea who I was.

I had worked with Carol for five years. Five. Long. Years. Every day I passed by her cubicle, exchanging the kind of empty small talk that fills the void of office life. “How’s it going?” “Any plans for the weekend?” “Can’t believe it’s already Wednesday.” And yet, here I was, apparently so forgettable that outside the fluorescent-lit hellscape of our corporate hive, I was just another random guy at the grocery store.

I tried to save face. “Yeah, crazy running into you here,” I said, though it wasn’t crazy at all. We lived in the same neighborhood. The same exact neighborhood. I’d even seen her walk her dog past my apartment several times. But clearly, none of this mattered.

Carol glanced at the box of Frosted Flakes in my hand like it held the key to unlocking my identity. “I didn’t recognize you without your, uh, work clothes,” she said, offering a weak smile.

I looked down at myself. I wasn’t in some kind of elaborate disguise—just jeans and a hoodie, the unofficial weekend uniform of anyone who’s given up on looking fashionable. But apparently, without my business casual getup, I was unrecognizable.

There was an awkward pause as she fiddled with her basket. It was one of those reusable tote bags, of course—Carol seemed like a reusable bag type. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, clearly trying to escape the conversation but trapped by the social obligation to pretend like this wasn’t weird.

“So… how’s work?” I asked, as if we weren’t both silently screaming inside at the pointlessness of the question.

“Oh, you know, same old, same old,” she said with a laugh that sounded more like a cough. “Busy, busy.”

Busy, busy. Right. Carol was the queen of looking busy while doing absolutely nothing, a master of the art of appearing stressed while scrolling through Facebook in a minimized window. But I wasn’t going to call her out on it—not here, not now.

“Well, I should probably—” Carol gestured vaguely down the aisle, though it was clear she had no particular destination in mind. “Good seeing you, Mike,” she added, the “Mike” sounding like it had an asterisk next to it, just in case she was wrong.

“Yeah, you too,” I mumbled, watching her walk away with the same polite indifference she probably showed to the mailman.

I stood there for a minute, still clutching the cereal box, replaying the moment over and over in my head. “Who are you?” That was the hardest part. It wasn’t just that she didn’t remember me—it was the realization that I was so generic, so utterly bland, that I could easily fade into the background of someone’s life, even after five years of daily interaction.

I tossed the Frosted Flakes into my cart and wheeled over to the dairy section. Maybe I’d run into someone else from the office—someone who would _definitely_ remember me. But as I reached for a carton of milk, I started to wonder: if Carol couldn’t recognize me, who else had forgotten me? Was I just a faceless cog in the great machine of suburban living, destined to blend into every grocery store, every office, every park?

I shook the thought away and headed for the checkout, where the cashier greeted me with the most sincere interaction I’d had all day.

“Do you have a rewards card?” she asked, not caring in the slightest who I was.

“Yes,” I said. Finally, someone who knew how to ask the important questions.